


A HUNDRED BILLION CORPSES BROADCAST IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE

by orphan_account



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Animal Death, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Eating Disorders, Emetophobia, Gen, Hallucinations, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Minor Character Death, Monsters, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Self-Mutilation, Sexual Content, Suicidal Thoughts, Transformation, dimitri/sylvain but not really and it ends poorly, flat fruit stand, the world is shaped according to my whims!, wahoo!, wow! the monster sylvain fic literally not a single person wants!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-20
Updated: 2020-03-16
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:28:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22823323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Shadowed by its wild hair are equally red eyes as opposed to brown. When it speaks a flash of fang slips out. Its claws curl against the dock, sitting on the edge of the muddy pond. But that makes both of them, doesn’t it?Maybe later when they’re done, he thinks, they’ll go down to the market and it can tear his body to shreds and leave his guts on the stairs.-Sylvain takes a blow for his brother and pays for it dearly.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 18
Kudos: 63





	1. all corrupt everything

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by mindless doodling of Sylvain with sharp teeth and then I thought 'Hey, monster Sylvain is kinda hot" 
> 
> Additional warnings include vaguely suicidal thoughts and a very vague implication of sexual abuse. At this point everything is pretty tame but I promise it will get wild.

When Sylvain is eight his father leads him into the grand armoury of Castle Gautier, kept behind oak doors that to his eye look grander and more imposing than the mountains to the north. The stone-faced guards pull the doors apart as the two step on through, and Sylvain is enraptured by the seemingly endless amount of weaponry lining the vast walls. Swords, lances, daggers, and pikes hang from racks in perfect order, shining and unblemished. Suits of armour from ages past stand solemnly, empty visors staring at him and his father as they pass by. An elegant bow hanging from the wall catches his eye and he goes for a closer look, but his father takes his arm and ushers him on.

In nine years Miklan will slaughter the guards standing outside and break through the doors to reach the treasure within, but will be stopped. Their father will disinherit him and call it a mercy, and no one will believe it. But Sylvain has no way of knowing this. 

At the far end of the hall, lying on what seems almost as reverent as an altar, is the Lance of Ruin, the blood-red Crest Stone flickering in the gentle light of the torches flanking it. 

“This is your birthright” his father says, his voice sounding like the glowing embers of a dying fire as he takes the Lance in both hands. It comes alive immediately, twitching and squirming in his grasp like a dying bug, emitting a red light like the eyes of a beast. Sylvain gasps and stumbles back in fear, eyeing the lance warily like it might bite. His father gives a rare chuckle at his expression and steps forward. “Hold out your hands, my son. You will have to wield this soon.”

Sylvain holds out his hands cautiously, and his father lowers the Lance into his pudgy hands. It feels old, old beyond imagination, yet at the same time feels familiar, like it had been custom made just for him. It continues to squirm as he looks at the blade with mild disgust, the Crest Stone pulsing lazily in a grotesquely hypnotic way. 

It starts in the blade of the relic. He feels something move in the heart of the weapon even though the erratic twitching of the Lance gives no such indication. It feels  _ wrong _ , and in that moment every cell in his body screams at him to drop the weapon right that second, but he doesn’t because he would not know what excuse to come up with if he did so he holds on tighter and whatever it is moves through the blade and down to where his hands are gripping it white-knuckled and it coils its way up his arms and burrows through his skin, settling cold and unforgiving like pitch in bones, muscles, nerves, curling up like a resting wolf in his heart. The Lance of Ruin makes a hollow  _ clatter _ as it falls to the floor as he scratches wildly at his veins in horror to try and claw whatever settled in his veins  _ out _ but all he sees is his father wrenching his arm back in fury as he drags him out of the armoury, angrily berating him as he does.

* * *

The class charges up the tower like a surging line of ants towards the top, rain and blood slicking underfoot and making every step up the stairs horribly precarious. Sylvain gets a bit of a sense of deja-vu, running up the stairs back home only to find Miklan sneering at him from the top before pushing him down. His classmates are antsy in the way a horse shuffles its hooves, ears flicking side to side and tail swishing as something dangerous prowls in the distance. They’re especially jumpy around him, had been jumpy since the moment the professor announced that the bastard son of Gautier had stolen the relic and made off into the night. 

And everyone knew somehow, that this month’s mission was his. Because it was a noble’s duty to defend their houses honour, and if defending their honour meant killing their brother then so be it. Dimitri came up to him after the professor dismissed the class and asked in that horribly earnest way of his if he wanted to stay back for the month’s mission, gauntlet-clad hands folded nervously in front of him. He’s gotten condolences from people he doesn’t even know, wild fire-red hair telling everyone exactly who he is. 

Staring at his brother’s armoured form though, his feelings are still agonizingly out of reach like a jumbled up list covered with ink blots and tea stains, torn in half and then trod underfoot til it became completely illegible. He can make out the first few words of ‘sorrow’, the runny markings of ‘relief’, ‘anger’ bleeding from the top. The sweet feeling of vengeance tinges the whole thing, justice for a decade and a half of pure hell a kind reward. He thinks anyone that can give a name to this should be rich. 

The Lance of Ruin lies dead in Miklan’s grip, the Crest stone winking its big red eye at Sylvain, reflections in the torchlight acting like the two of them share a secret. He thinks back, back, back, to the feeling of oil-slick fingers reaching into his skin and his father’s hand closed around his small wrist leaving dark purple bruises that stained his arms for weeks. Of being kept up at night with the phantom pains of cold claws and pulsing muscle curling in his heart, praying until morning when the sun brought the horrible realization that the Goddess did not save him. 

Miklan is a skilled warrior and the battle is hard fought. Even if he was eventually disowned he was raised in the war-drenched house of Gautier, learning the proper stance for lancefaire far before he learned to read. He remembers watching him in the shadows of the training grounds far out of sight, how his face was free of the seemingly permanent scowl he wore. He sees shadows of that in his strikes, the way he thrusts the Lance and dodges attacks from the other bringing him back to the time of cold afternoons spent in the corner by the racks of weapons. Nostalgia gnaws at his heels, sudden and terribly bitter at the back of his throat. He chokes on it as he thrusts his lance through his brothers armour, tastes it at the back of his throat as blood bubbles up through his brothers lips. 

And then the Lance changes. 

It twitches in his grasp, frantic and horrible like a beetle flipped on its back when it hasn’t moved the entire time it had been in Miklan’s steely grip. The Crest stone pulses, not in the way that it did when Sylvain held it, but in a sick way, like the beating of a heart in an open chest cavity weakly sputtering blood. Tendrils creep out, up the shaft, slick and black in the faint light of the torches lining the walls, and Sylvain knows that it will consume him and everything and everyone until there is no one left and maybe he doesn’t owe his brother this small mercy but he does it anyways and wrenches the Lance out of his grasp and drives it up and into his brother’s chest. 

His body falls to the ground with a sickening thump, but he can’t hear it, his classmates frantic buzzing fading the the back of his mind as he feels it, feels it creeping in his bones like it did that day in the armoury, flowing through his veins and drinking his blood. The Lance falls out of his grasp and on to the cold floor of the tower and it should stop like last time and leave him with nothing but imaginary claws and imaginary eyes but terror overtakes him because  _ he can still feel it _ . It crawls in him, chews through his ribs and muscle and devours his heart in one fell swoop like it’s plucking grapes off the stem, seething under his skin and filling him from head to toe. He collapses to his knees and tears his gauntlets off, the armour skittering across the floor as he scratches frantically at his arms harder and harder and harder until there’s red blood under his nails but he can still feel it in him, and he knows no matter how much he dissects himself it will never come out. 

Hands land on his shoulder and he flinches, curls up like a pillbug with his head pressed against the rough fabric covering his thighs. Still in him, still there, crawling through his veins and into his lungs because he can’t breathe, just wheezes and gasps with his face buried in his hands and tears running down his face staring at the mangled form of his brother in the space between his fingers as the monsters burrows within. 

* * *

The Lance stares at him from the corner of his room, red eye staring holes in him even as he curls up on the bed and faces the cold stone wall. He didn’t want it back, refused to even look at it on the return to the monastery. No one else wanted to touch it, wary of the way it shuddered on the ground, in the way it seemed to be held together with tendons and muscle instead of anything made in a forge. The professor finally tore the cape off of one of the fallen bandits and wrapped the weapon up like the fabric was a burial shroud. Even they seemed reluctant to handle it because they tossed it in the convoy wagon as soon as they left the bottom floor of the tower. 

Miklan’s body was left at the top of the tower to rot in the rain and winds. The church would have never granted him a proper burial, so the kindest thing left was to let him be pecked apart by crows. Maybe Sylvain would’ve dragged his body down the steps and burnt him to a crisp out of view of everyone else if he had not been stumbling around like a drunkard clawing at his own skin and flinching away from anyone who so much as looked at him. 

Would Miklan have buried him if he had died? If he froze to death in the mountains would he have trekked back out to do him the service of digging him a three-foot-deep grave? If he had curled up and died like he should have in the well would he had tossed enough dirt down there to hide his body like a blanket? Every time he bashed his head against the stone walls of the castle or threw him down the stairs, when he tried to smother him in his sleep and tore a knife across his stomach during a petty argument, would he have enough pity for his dead brother to burn him like everyone else? The tiny part of Sylvain that still believes in his brother says  _ yes,  _ but every bone and muscle cracking under the pressure of the beast within him screams  _ no, no, no. _

One last stand off and he gets to maim his brother with the blade of the guillotine that had been hanging over his neck his entire life. If this was a play, he’s sure the audience would be in awe over the sheer irony of his brother’s last moments. People clap and cheer as he takes his final bow and when the curtain closes he’s left with the blade of the knife sticking in his shoulder for the rest of his life, staring at him from across the short expanse of his bedroom floor. 

And the poison on the dagger seeps deep in him, burns its path under his skin and makes him stumble over to retch into the bin under his desk for what seems like the fiftieth time that evening. Nothing but bile comes out because he hasn’t eaten a single thing since he killed his brother, but the sheer sensation of something moving in him makes him ill. He stares at the bottom of the bin as the spit and bile drips from his chin and lands with the rest of whatever he’s coughed up over the past few hours. 

He groans and wipes his mouth with the hem of his tunic before curling up on the cold floor of his room. Through the crack between the door and the ground he can see the warping shadows the torch hanging on the wall outside his room casts. It looks a little like the shuffling of feet outside his door, and he’s struck with such a horrid longing for someone to help him that it feels like a stab in the gut. 

Lying on the ground curled up he feels so  _ small _ , so terribly lonely, transported back to when he was thirteen and would choke on his sobs in the privacy of his bedchamber, wanting more than anything else in the world for someone to take him into their arms and comfort him, stroke his hair, tell him everything was ok. When nobody came for him he settled for stroking his own hair, closing his eyes as shaking fingers carded through red curls, pretending that he was loved. 

He would fall asleep with his hand tangled in his hair and dried tear streaks on his cheeks, curled up in a ball on the floor of his room. In the present, lying in the same position on his floor with his hand in his hair and bile on his lips, he’ll never get to sleep. His ear pressed to the floor catches every sound below, all amplified to the point where it resembles the call of the bone war horns that announced an invasion; a death call, a warning scream. He hears Linhardt snoring, Lysithea’s muttering as she pores over her notes, Bernadetta’s soft breathing, the creaking of Raphael’s bed. 

He hears down the hall, the whistle of air escaping Caspar’s open mouth, Edelgard’s half-choked cries, the crinkle of paper from underneath Claude’s arm, Dimitri’s restless thrashing, he can hear everything, everything, everything down to the beating of their hearts. He hears the blood pumping through their bodies as a discordant tattoo on a drum, muffled song slipping in through the cracks of his fingers digging into the back of his skull. The thundering stirs something in him, something horrible and awful and all encompassing that can’t be defined through the roar of the rows of hearts laid out for him like a buffet, like the list that he left trampled at the top of Conand Tower. 

The beast screams in him, jagged teeth pulling at his lungs. He can almost make out words, snatches of a ghostly song carried out to sea. 

_ Hate you- I hate you- hate you- hate _

The blanks fill in with running water from his own thoughts, shifting words forming half-eaten sentences that are spat out against a mirror. 

_ I’m not- You are-  _

In the mirror his hair is shorter than his brother’s. It had been longer when he was young, from about ten to eighteen. People liked to drag their fingers through it when they kissed him, tug his head back when they bit at his neck, tear at it to the point of pain when they fucked him. He stood in front of his bedroom mirror and hacked at it with the dagger he kept at his belt until he was surrounded by an arc of choppy red curls at his feet. 

_ Banging against the door screaming love me love me love me- _

Even as his father screamed at him about propriety and a nobleman’s image he puffed out his chest and wore his shorn hair like a scarlet badge of pride, a mark of ownership on a body that wasn’t his. He left the men and women scraping their nails against the blunt hair at the back of his neck instead as they wormed their way under his skin. 

_ getoutgetoutgetoutgetout _

Morning creeps in through the crack of the door and shines in his eyes when he names the feeling, the siren song in his veins, and he stumbles over himself in his race to the stinking bin to rid himself of every last trace of the hunger seething within. 


	2. Déjà, comme des trous de vents, comme reproduit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Am I a monster?” he says in the high-pitched warble of his youth, the scared tone he hid from everyone but the mirror. Eight, he learned how to flirt. Ten, he learned how to carry his body. Fourteen, his voice finally deepened enough to slip into a seductive pitch. A star tenor in the opera, for sure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings for this chapter include
> 
> -heavy gore  
> -heavy emetophobia  
> -more implied abuse  
> -implied dubious consent   
> -tooth stuff (?)

Ingrid is concerned, in the way Dimitri was before the mission. Sylvain can tell by the furrowing of her brow, the subtle pursing of her lips. It’s the type of concern he doesn’t want anywhere near him. It’s inevitable though, as she plunks her overloaded plate down across from him during breakfast, because what type of friend would leave a friend alone after the death of a loved one? He wishes, not for the first time, that Ingrid was a far shittier person. 

“Are you sure you’re okay to come to class? You look awful” she says as she tucks in. Her knife scrapes against her plate as she cuts into her dish, beef sausages and poached eggs with a splash of colour in the form of a fruit salad, slices of Morfis plum glimmering like drops of blood. 

“Aw, don’t look so worried about me. I was just out celebrating a successful mission, that’s all” he says with a lazy smirk. Ingrid huffs and stabs her fork into an apple slice, imagining that the fruit is him no doubt. “You should come with me next time, blow off some steam. I bet I could show you a good time.” 

“Seriously! I mean,” she leans in over her plate and lowers her voice “you just killed your brother. No one will blame you for being upset.” Her sympathy is poisonous, hanging in the air like a noose around his neck. He isn’t mourning his brother, doesn’t want to and even if he did want to he isn’t sure he would be allowed. A murderer does not pine for his victims after all. 

But Ingrid doesn’t need to know that, so he chokes down his thoughts into slimy well walls. “I am serious! Like I said, Miklan was an asshole and got what was coming to him. I’m totally fine.”

No amount of lying will erase the twelve hours of paranoid vigilance condensed into the dark bags under his eyes or the shaking of his hand as he pushes at his own breakfast, half a pomegranate bleeding out towards a single boiled egg. Ingrid knows this, and Sylvain knows that she knows this.

Ingrid also knows better than to push him lest he bite, so instead she silently deposits one of her sausages on his plate, a silent agreement to a truce wrapped in a thin casing. He cuts a piece and swallows it, and it tastes like sand. 

“Who cooked this morning? This sausage tastes like when I ate flour on a dare.” 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about” she says as she inhales her third egg. “Every time I eat here I think I’ve gone to heaven. That steak the other day? Cooked by the Goddess herself, I swear.” 

Sylvain scrapes at his pomegranate with a nail and pops a couple seeds in his mouth. He gags at the taste, the fruit rolling over his tongue like pebbles. “Even the fruit tastes like shit today.”

Ingrid squints at him as he squashes his egg under his fork and lifts it to his mouth. “Are you sure you’re okay? The food is perfectly fine.” 

He taps the fork at his lip and winks. “Must be the hangover.”   
  
She jabs her knife at him threateningly. “Really! I’d eat the rest of your food if-” she grimaces at the pomegranate seeds he’s shoving into the mess of egg “well… If there wasn’t so little. You really should eat more than that. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day after all.”

He snorts. “That’s what you said about lunch and dinner. Maybe it just looks like I’m not eating a ton because of your mountain of food.” 

“They’re all important! And an egg and a piece of fruit is not enough! Look, Felix agrees with me” she gestures to the end of the table where Felix is pointedly ignoring them. “Right?” 

“What Sylvain eats is none of my concern” he sneers as he jabs a knife into his own meal. “Don’t drag me into this.” 

Ingrid huffs and turns back to Sylvain who is doing his best to turn his breakfast into an abstract art piece. “Just… don’t overdo it today, okay?”

He might as well have been handed a free pass to do whatever the hell he wants that day, so he takes Ingrid’s advice and walks in the opposite direction of class as soon as the bell sounds out. He’s desperate for any sensation other than the beast boiling under his skin and finds a boy in town whose gaze lingers a little too long on his ass for his liking and saunters over.

In the alley he shoves Sylvain down on to his knees and practically jams his cock down his throat. His nails dig into the back of the guy’s thighs as he gags into sweaty pubic hair, his cock pressing against the roof of his mouth as he grabs Sylvain’s hair and forces his head even further between his thighs. 

Sylvain gags as he thrusts harder and the guy must really like it because he comes soon after. He sits down on his ass and smirks up at the guy as he swallows, noting dimly in the back of his mind that it tastes just like everything else he’s eaten today; pure and plain nothingness. Which is nice, because he’s usually left gagging at the aftertaste long after. 

He’s left with a pat on the back which is a weirdly tender action from the man who spent the past ten minutes choking him with his dick and a whisper of ‘ _ come see me again soon _ ’, which Sylvain immediately discards into the metaphorical trash bin of his mind. Something curls deep within the disgust roiling in his gut, and it feels like laughing.

  
  


* * *

It wears his brother’s skin, standing on the pinnacle of the tower caught in the storm. He can tell it’s wrong though, with the way his face is. He isn’t angry, or malicious, or anything. He’s really nothing at all, and the beast is wearing his skin like a borrowed shirt. 

He takes Sylvain in his arms and he realizes he’s ten years old, small and scared and desperately lonely. Miklan- the beast- its arms are cold and heavy around his slim shoulders and it feels like drowning. 

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” It parrots with his brother's voice. 

He wants to tear the arms hanging off him like dead branches but simultaneously wants to bask in the feeling he’s longed for so much of his life. He’s always been so awfully contradictory like that. No wonder Felix doesn’t want to hang out with him. 

“Look at you” it continues “I should have protected you.”

It plucks words from his chest and puppets them in the air. Words he wanted to hear long ago revealed in the dissection of his body. That’s all they are, just words with nothing behind them. If this was class the professor would surely call it out for plagiarism. Fifty points off your mark. Try to come up with something in your own words next time, won’t you?

“Look at what they did to you” and it almost seems like pity as it places a tender kiss amidst the wild red atop his skull. Tear off his skin next, see the remnants of the guts they plucked at like crows.

“Am I a monster?” he says in the high-pitched warble of his youth, the scared tone he hid from everyone but the mirror. Eight, he learned how to flirt. Ten, he learned how to carry his body. Fourteen, his voice finally deepened enough to slip into a seductive pitch. A star tenor in the opera, for sure. 

And it stays horribly silent with its face pressed in his hair, because the both of them know the answer. His skin screams between the arms encircling him in the way it did when he was young, before he taught himself not to feel the touches against his body. 

“If I’m a monster then you should kill me.” It’s a black and white statement, the type children have exclusive access to. Monsters kill people, people kill monsters. Kill me before I kill anyone else lies on the stone floor like his brothers innards. You’re a monster, right? So show me your teeth. 

It takes his shoulders in its hands and looks him in the eye. It’s a paternal pose, one he’d seen replicated by Lord Rodrigue with his sons so many times, when he would kneel down and brush away their tears and ask what was wrong. His father stood above him with his permanent shadow. He used to like to hide in the folds of his cloak when he was still carefree, but he always got kicked out. A soldier from the moment he could lift his head, born choking to death on the silver spoon in his mouth. 

“Is that what you want?” What a laughably rhetorical question, so funny that he wants to choke on it. They both know the answer. 

It grabs him by the hair with clawed hands and smashes his skull against the ground like a fine porcelain teacup. That’s the brother he knows! The one and only, who tried to gut him like a fish on his fifteenth birthday. He lies there like a broken doll as the rain washes away the blood and finds this far preferable to the hug. 

  
  


* * *

He gives himself a good look in the mirror three months later. He’s always been slim compared to his father who slung around greatswords like rapiers for his morning warmup, his brother who had the physique of a fortress knight at age sixteen. He doesn’t train, skips out on lunch and dinner for dates. It ruins his appetite sitting across from the girls he takes out. Picking at his roast, thinking ‘ _ when are you gonna fuck me?’ _ , a swig of beer to chase it down. 

But now his shirt hangs off him like a sackcloth caught in the branches of a tree in the dead of winter. His face carries the gaunt sharpness of a noble who was cast out from their house and had to starve like the rest of the commoners. His lance strikes are faltering in battle, even Ashe managed to bowl him over on his feet during sparring. 

“Are you okay?” the girl the other night asked him as she peeled his shirt off the same way he peeled tangerines. His skin was as white as the pith, stretched over rows of bone like hide over a drum 

“Course I am baby”  _ get the fuck away from me  _ “I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t”  _ don’t pretend you care _ . 

His breakfast that morning consists of a single plum that bleeds over his chin when he bites it. There’s room enough in him for the fruit and nothing else. He learned the hard way that if he eats more than that he’ll spend training hunched over the bin in his room gagging on the remnants of whatever he ate that day. 

It doesn’t change that he’s hungry though. His stomach might have shrunk to the size of a walnut but it still tears it’s aching fangs into the rest of his body. Age eleven, he thought he was going to die. There was nothing but white snow and skeletal trees grasping the sky for miles around. The sun only rose for a few hours in the winter of the far north. He didn’t know how long it had been. Minutes, maybe hours. Maybe it had been days. Maybe he was dead, but the screaming of his stomach said otherwise. The dead don’t need to eat. 

Felix’s heartbeat knocks into him like a nail. Dimitri’s thunders along a few rows ahead. Mercedes drills into his ears from the other side of the class. There isn’t a single thing written on his page but the professor has been droning on for hours. Has it been hours? The flow of time breaks around him like a stone set in a stream when all he can think about is the groaning of his stomach. 

The professor is silent. Their heart is an empty well to throw stones into. It’s almost blissful, if he closes his eyes and focuses real hard on them he can almost pretend that the sound of the living isn’t driving him mad. If he can’t stand the living does that make the professor a corpse? He’s dreamt of caving in their skull with a rock. If they walk around with no pulsing of their heart then it’s a thought to comfort himself with when he has to look them in the eye. 

He swipes an apple from the market after class. The sound it makes when he bites into it accompanied with no taste grates against his eardrums like sharp stones. The bite he took settles in his throat the way a bone would and he coughs accordingly. 

The inside of the apple is bright red. 

Panic sets in through the fog of starvation like the lighthouse on the frigid coast. Blood-tinged saliva drips down his chin and onto the floor in long strings as he stares in horror at the fruit in his hand. The skin is a glossy green and the inside should have browned as he exposed the innards but now the hole he exposed is an awful scarlet, the only speck of white belonging from the tooth lodged in the flesh. 

He flings the apple against the ground as he staggers to the fishing pond, crimson peeking through his fingers as he covers his mouth. There’s a chunk of concrete digging in his throat, scraping at his insides every time he inhales. His reflection in the water is wide-eyed in horror as another tooth is dislodged from his jaw, leaving ribbons of blood in the water as it sinks like a wishing coin to the depths. 

Voices tangle at his back as he makes a mad dash for his dorm with his knuckles shoved in his mouth. His jaw is being dissected into tiny shards and he’s left to choke as they bubble up through his lips. Three more teeth fall into his hands like dice as he slams the door, blood spattering a trail on the floor like a cat leaving wet pawprints after swiping for fish in the pond. Coughs claw their way up his throat and drip down his hand as he crumples on the soiled carpet. 

Somewhere, the beast laughs and laughs and laughs as he vomits up sticky blood on the floor of his room.  _ Show me your teeth, _ he said. The beast responds in kind. Sylvain’s always had a bit of a touch for gallows humour after all, only stopped making his jokes when they made Felix cry. He can’t really bring himself to laugh this time. 

His jaw aches like he had been bludgeoned with a hammer, the ragged holes left in his mouth weeping as he prods with his tongue.  _ Sleep,  _ the beast soothes as he presses his cheek to the bloody floor. 

_ Sleep, _ it says, and a suckerpunch of agony leaves him out on the ground. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I literally exist only for good breakfast buffets. I would kill anyone for a breakfast sausage. I am not joking in any capacity.


	3. Lips of a Lying Dying Wonder Boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sylvain has a rude awakening and gains an unlikely ally
> 
> or
> 
> When the only friendship you haven't ruined yet is with the brother you wished you always had; a monster that takes you fishing inside your own brain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's discussion of csa and abuse bookending this chapter, so watch out for that. its tagged but tags are vague.
> 
> additional additional warnings include  
> -non consensual kissing  
> -more teeth stuff!!!!  
> -thinking about cannibalism   
> -implied flat fruit stand

His toes cast ripples in the water as he skims them across the clear surface of the pond. The water is a crystal teal, the transparency lasting towards the bottom where he can see the ghosts of bones left behind in the white sand. It’s a beautiful sunny day and his hair tangles as it dries in the wind. He’s fifteen and already a man, and the soggy fabric of his shirt clinging to his frame like a ghost reveals the hickies on his neck that match the bruises on his ribs. 

His brother casts a line into the pond beside him. His brother’s body is at the bottom somewhere. There are familiar bones there, his brother, his mother, and him. His brother turns to him and smiles, and his teeth resemble the jagged mountain pass of the border. 

“They hurt you” it says in the same gentle tone it used last time, like he’s a baby bird with a broken wing that’ll jump to its death out of his hand if he speaks too loud.

He leans back on his hands against the dock, splinters peeling off and jabbing into his palms. “‘S my fault. I was the one who seduced them in the first place.” The image of his ribcage whorls and distorts as he kicks his foot in the water. 

“They hurt  _ you _ ” it repeats like he’s simple. It doesn’t really matter. He’s taken hurt in fistfuls, found the right way to make himself bleed long ago. His body might as well be a canvas propped up by sharp bones for everyone to drag their brushes across. An abstract piece, sells for loads in the right markets. But why pay out the ass when you could get it for free? 

He could say all that. “You hurt me” he says instead, wielding the sentence like a rapier. Break through the defenses, stagger the beast, catch it in the eye. There was a seminar on fighting beasts the other day. Boring as shit. 

It bumps its shoulder against him in the affectionate way that people do. Real Miklan would have held him under the surface of the water until he went still. Fake Miklan holds the fish it reeled in up to the sun and lets it back into the water a moment later when it proves too small. 

“I wish I was there back then. I could have helped you.” 

He muffles the laugh that claws out of him with a hand over his mouth. Through his fingers it sounds like sobbing. “By what? Tearing through my skin and biting off the head of the first person who touched me? Fat chance that would’ve helped.” 

It sets its fishing rod against the dock and presses its forehead into his wet hair.  _ Don’t touch me don’t touch me for fuck’s sake get away from me- _ “I could have loved you like he should have. Like a brother should have.” 

He’s fully hysterical now, laughter tearing out of him as he curls into himself, shoulders shaking like he’s been hit with a thunder spell. He has one hand on the dock to keep himself from falling off as he laughs like he hasn’t in a full decade. 

Love him? Him? Sylvain Jose Gautier, whore of Gautier, shabby and useless, building his own funeral pyre one twig at a time. What a fucking joke that a beast would pretend to love  _ him _ . Love on a technicality. It loves him because it lives in him, chewing on his organs and drinking his blood. It loves him for his rotting body, just like everyone else. 

“What, are you gonna fuck me next?” he manages to wheeze out before his manic laughter drags him under again. “Thanks, but no thanks. Maybe come as a pretty lady next time and then we’ll talk.”

It looks at him sadly and the fury that squeezes its hands around his neck is so strong he thinks he could bowl over an army.  _ Loved you. Like he should have. Loved you.  _ What a fucking joke. 

He’s sobbing, and a high-pitched whine drags out of his throat as he bites through his lip. Every gasp for air dangles out of his reach and all he can do is choke and wail into his hands as the grinning skull of his brother stares at him from beneath the pond. 

  
  


* * *

His jaw drags like a leaden weight when he wakes with his cheek smushed against the carpet, dried… something sticking loose fibres to his face as he lifts his head. Sothis and all the fuckin’ saints, he feels like complete and utter shit. It’s like he drank a full three pints of moonshine on an empty stomach the day before and then got trampled by the cavalry.  _ Fuck _ , but his jaw hurts though. What the hell was he doing last night? 

Last night on his point of view. Last night when he supposedly collapsed on his rug after beating his head in against Dedue’s shield. From his vantage point on the floor his window says past twilight. Last night is now, dipshit. 

He peels himself off the floor and finds his carpet soaked with blood, a sickly dark brown mixing in with the threads. Red paints his arms, hands, and the front of his shirt as well. It flakes off easily as he scratches at his arm, fluttering down like dandruff. There are teeth scattered around everywhere that resemble pearls broken from a murdered noblewoman’s necklace.

Apple. Pond. Blood. Teeth. And for a moment he lived in a world where this nightmare had never existed. 

He stumbles over his feet during his mad scramble for the mirror and falls back on his ass with a shriek at the sight of his reflection. Big sharp fangs stare back at him from where his blunt canines should be, mirrored on the bottom by another smaller yet equally wicked pair. His tongue stings as he runs it over them, fresh blood plopping on his lip and running down his chin. 

Horror crawls up his spine at the shape of his teeth in his gums, stark white and screaming of menace. The teeth of a carnivore, to grab and tear and pierce until nothing is left. If the hunger that boiled over listening to the heartbeats of the living wasn’t proof enough, here it is in his face, lodged in his jaw. The same as the beast at the docks, puppeting his brother’s face into a smile that displayed every jagged tooth. 

There’s knocking at his door, low but insistent, a heartbeat in the dark. The knights come to drag him away. A lover back for seconds. His brother waiting to tear him apart. 

“Sylvain?” Dimitri’s voice sounds through, muffled by the scant inches of oak, “I heard you yell. Are you alright?” Dimitri, all at once agonizingly sincere and almost as much of a liar as himself. Poor kid never figured out how to smile properly after the tragedy. He sat with him about a month later when his father sent him to offer condolences, tried to teach him.  _ No, no, don’t just show your teeth, you’ll drive off all the ladies like that, you gotta use your eyes, use your eyes too because they can always tell.  _

“Sylvain? May I come in?”  _ How do I know so much about this? Hah, I’m glad you can still joke around. Don’t worry about it, just keep doin’ what I told ya.  _

Wait, come in? Pick up the teeth like odd pebbles, throw them out with the bathwater. Wait, teeth. He can’t smile, but closed lip smiles are a no-go, no fucking way. Teeth mean a vulnerability for people to cling to. Teeth also mean a warning. People who smile closed-lipped are locked tighter than a miser’s purse. 

“...Sylvain?”

Well, fuck. He tears his bloodied shirt off in one fell motion as he topples to the door, buttons raining down and mixing with his teeth on the ground. He pushes through as quick as possible so Dimitri doesn’t get a glimpse inside and leans against the door as casually as possible. His lips snag on his teeth as he smiles so he tries for a smirk instead. He wonders how he looks in the dim light of the hallway. Wolfish, probably. Positively demonic. 

“Hey Your Highness,” he says, keeping his tone quiet “What’s up?”

Dimitri stares at his exposed chest with a slight dusting of red on his cheeks before remembering to speak. “Ah- I heard you yell so I came to check on you.” His eyebrows wrinkle as he stares at the sharp bones peeking up under his skin. Leave the shirt on, get questioned about the blood, leave it off and face him poking at his innards. Lose-lose in all possible cases, really. 

“That? I just fell out of bed, that’s all.” Dimitri gives him a look and he hastily adds “and no, there is no girl in there right now. Don’t give me that look.”

DImitri wrings his hands and doesn't look Sylvain in the eyes. His hair is sticking up in every direction like the spikes on the head of a mace. It’s almost cute, he thinks. “I do not mean to pry, but you are not looking well.”

“Jeez, this again? I already got an earful from Ingrid, I don’t need you piling on me too.” Concern is a special type of burden for every party involved, he’s found. Real concern implies that someone cares about him, and no one deserves that. 

“Sylvain you- pardon me saying so, but you do not look healthy at all. I should not be able to count every one of your ribs and yet-” he squints a little in the darkness ”Is that blood on your lip? What has happened to you?”

“Huh?” Oh yeah, his tongue was bleeding because of his teeth. Teeth, right, he has to get Dimitri the  _ fuck _ away from him and quick. “Listen Your Highness, I’m totally fine. All I had was a little accident, that’s all. Can I go back to sleep now?”

DImitri squares his shoulders and stares at Sylvain with all the princely dignity he can muster in the dead of night. “I must insist on taking you to the infirmary. I am far too worried about your condition to simply let you be.” 

“Yeah, but in the middle of the night? Think about poor Manuela-”

Sylvain does his best not to flinch as Dimitri’s fingers close around his wrist as he drags him down the hall. Goddess, his grip has always been so fucking obtrusive. He snapped his arm clean in half when Sylvain was eleven, tried grabbing it to show him something or other and then the bone wrenched straight through the skin. He’s always been a little wary around Dimitri after that. 

“Your Highness, I’m serious-”

“Your condition is too dire to wait any longer. I will not take no for an answer.”

Fine. He can play dirty too. “Dimitri.”

He stops on a dime at the sound of his own name and looks back, opens his mouth to say something but doesn’t get the chance to choke out a word as Sylvain pulls him forward and mashes his lips against his. He makes a little sound of protest against his lips and his pretty blue eyes go as wide as a pair of shields, glistening in the faint light of the dorm. It seems to last forever, both of them with their eyes wide open in the middle of the night. Sylvain’s tooth grazes the bottom of Dimitri’s lip which causes him to yelp and jump back, face twisted in fury and confusion. 

“Sylvain, what-”

“Goodnight, Your Highness. Don’t stay up too late, yeah?” And he turns back to his room and shuts the door with a click, leaving Dimitri in the dark. 

* * *

  
  


Dimitri doesn’t look at him the next day. He tries to occupy every space where Sylvain isn’t, makes excuses and flees when he comes into the dining hall. The training grounds are so thick with tension that he cuts off chunks as he trades blows with Ashe, Dimitri locked in combat with Dedue twenty feet down the line. Another relationship laid dead at his feet like a decapitated bird proudly presented by a cat. There’s a monster in the class and it’ll tear them all apart. 

His arms shake like leaves in the winter as Ashe pushes back against him, feet drawing shapes in the dirt as he jumps back from the arc of his lance. Ashe may as well be fighting a glorified sack of hay for all that Sylvain is doing. He’s trained with a lance until his hands were skinned like wild game and his legs refused to move every day since he was four, but the beast chews it up and spits it on the ground. 

“You’ve really- gotten good at this” he huffs as he barely blocks a swing at his ribs. It isn’t just his strength that’s waned. His stamina drains from him like air wheezing out of a punctured lung. He has to grasp for every breath it seems, his body tied down at the wrists and ankles like lead weights. 

A bright flush blooms across Ashe’s face as he grins. “Oh, thank you! I’m still not nearly as good as you though.” 

Swing. Parry. A block that makes his arms scream in protest and drives his feet back in the sand. “You’re- too” he stumbles and falls heavy on his back foot, the grey pillars of the grounds shifting in a dizzying spiral, “hard- on yourself.” It’s like he’s climbing up a mountain, every step dragged down in the snow. Lifting the thin wooden lance to strike back is like he’s carrying the fucking monastery on his back, all the stone and gold and glass jabbing into his back. 

Ashe locks their lances together in a standstill, his bushy brows furrowing as Sylvain’s hands struggle to keep a grip. “Are you alright? You look pale.” 

_ No! _ , he itches to scream.  _ No I’m not! I haven’t eaten in days! I just vomited up all my fucking teeth last night! Does that spell okay to you?!  _ “Me?” he says instead, remembering to smirk. “Nah, I’m fine. Late night, if you know what I’m saying.” If his wink comes out awkwardly then Ashe doesn’t comment on it. 

Their noses are inches away from each other and it’s taking all of his self control not to breach that barrier and tear his throat out with his teeth, rip into his organs and drink his blood like wine. His heart beats quick like feet running and clings to his ears. If only Ashe knew what he was thinking, he would scream and everyone would stand around and pierce him with their lances like the beast he his until his corpse is nothing but a bleeding pincushion on the sand. 

Swing. Parry. Ashe is going easy on him now, his hits featherlight. He  _ hates _ it, hates him, now that he’s no more than some fragile doll to be smashed on the ground. His brother stands behind him and drags its nails down his throat. It leers over Ashe’s shoulder and sinks its teeth into his neck, tears him to shreds. Sylvain chokes out a yell and his lance hits the ground as he stumbles back and away from- from-

His legs collapse under his weight and his arms can’t catch the fall, his face smearing in the sand as someone yells above him. Ashe’s shouts for help, Felix yelling, Dimitri’s heavy boots hammering in the corner of his vision. Miklan laughs and laughs, dragging him down deeper. The hands grabbing him crash into him like meteors, but his scream comes out more like a whine and it’s the last thing he hears before everything goes black.

* * *

“You know” he says as he struggles to hook a wriggling worm onto the line. Blowflys, mealworms, expensive shiny lures lie in the rusted tackle box sitting between them. “I really think that sorta stuff is disgusting.” 

His brother feigns ignorance and takes gently takes the hook from his hands, piercing the worm through in one fell swoop. “What things?” it asks in the tone of voice that a parent would take when a child is being particularly vague. The water is a muddy brown stew, dead leaves and grass sitting on the top like dead fish. Sylvain keeps his ankles crossed up on the dock this time, sharp bone digging into the peeling wood. 

“Sex, romance, touching. That sorta stuff.” His brother passes the rod back and he casts the line. The pond seems bottomless, but the amount of silt clouding the top suggests shallow waters. Still, if he were to slip in he thinks he would never stop falling. 

It looks at him curiously. It’s nice. This is nice, he decides. Maybe later when they’re done they can head down to the fruit stand and buy something sweet. 

They had a hard time getting fresh fruit in Gautier. The land was a frozen desert pockmarked by the ravages of war, and they were both getting sick of eating peaches out of a jar. The first time he had fresh fruit was when he was eight, at a feast in Fhirdiad. He’s sixteen now, and it’s still the nicest thing he’s ever eaten.

“You’d think the opposite, right? Given my-” he gestures vaguely “everything about me. But really, I can’t stand being touched.”

The sun is bright enough to eat their shadows out from their feet, but the glare never reaches the surface of the water. “Do you think it was because of me?” it says, another rhetorical question wielded like an assassins poisoned dagger. 

“Yeah. You and them.” Pain is an inevitability on his skin. He can’t flinch, so it sinks in like a buildup of energy, and one day he thinks it will kill him. He tilts his head thoughtfully as he watches the line bob. “I don’t think you’re truly him though. You’re… different.”

“Different” it echoes. “I am still a monster in the end.” 

And he knows. Shadowed by it’s wild hair are equally red eyes as opposed to brown. When it speaks a flash of fang slips out. It’s claws curl against the dock, sitting on the edge of liquid brown. But that makes both of them, doesn’t it? 

Maybe later when they’re done, he thinks, they’ll go down to the market and it can tear his body to shreds and leave his guts on the stairs. 

A noblewoman sinks her teeth into him, his brother beats him for being a whore. He dissects himself for fun in front of the beast, it teaches him how to cast a line. Apples and oranges. Maybe they’re all beasts in the end. 

The line sinks beneath the water and he looks over to his brother for help. It grasps the rod without making him let go, careful not to touch him, and they both heave up the fish. It flails pathetically on the dock, rotting eyes and flesh spilling on the wood. His brother smiles, and he finds himself mirroring it. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> formal apology to dimivain nation. I like the boys, I just wanted to make sylvain do something objectively awful that was on-brand for him.


	4. your guts are like mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Visiting the doctor does him no favours

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is really when the Dead Dove comes in. Or dead cat. Animal death! Beware! And the end gets very gory.

He wakes at dusk. The sun bleeds red in his left eye through the window of the infirmary and casts his shadow on the wall. The blanket pulled over him weighs down like mail. His brother sits by his covered feet and waves silently, which he ignores. They’ve spent enough time together after all, right? A man’s gotta have some space. 

Felix stews angrily beside his bed, textbook cracked open over crossed legs. He’s nothing more than a dark blob against the backlight of the sun and he has to squint to really see him. He’s pissed, naturally. That's good. He deserves it. 

His brother mimes cutting a steak and smirks. Sylvain uses his middle finger to scratch the bridge of his nose. 

“Hey” he says, voice catching in his throat like a chunk of gravel. “What’s a guy like you doin’ in a dump like this?” 

He snaps up immediately and his hand shoots out to grab his collar. Sylvain flinches back with the urgency of a snails eyestalk, but he doesn’t seem to care. “You fucking  _ idiot _ ” he snarls, intense like a rabid wolf. Next foam is going to start spilling through his clenched teeth and Sylvain will have to put the poor bastard down. “Do you even know the state you're in?” he continues. 

He raises his hands in a lazy show of surrender and Felix generously lets him go. “I can take a wild guess” he drawls. His brother sends him a look that translates vaguely to ‘ _ get a load of this guy _ ’ and he lets out a quiet chuckle at that. 

Felix grabs his wrist and shoves it in his face like he’s trying to prove a point. “Look at this” he growls “you’re nothing but a stick at this point.”

_ Let go of me please fucking let go of me _ “Look at that!” he says cheerily. “Your fingers are touching! You’ve never been able to do that before.” Miklan howls in laughter as Felix’s face slowly contorts in rage. 

“You’re such a fool! Is this your idea of a joke?” His face gets blotchy when he’s really mad, unflattering red patches that stand out terribly against his hair. 

“Why are you here anyways? I thought you’d never stick around for a chump like me.” 

He’s lit up like a bonfire at this point. It’s almost cute, reminds him of when he was a little softer, a little rounder, a lot happier. “Ashe and I dragged you up here after you pulled your little stunt, then Manuela told me to stick around, make sure you don’t die in your sleep while she was out.”

“Awfully thoughtful of you.” he smirks. Felix’s left eye twitches as his blunt nails dig into his skin. 

“So this is a joke to you”  _ stop touching me please stop fucking touching me _

“Look, I…” he can’t say a single true thing to him right now. He doesn’t even want to talk in his direction for fear of Felix catching a glimpse of his teeth. He lays against the pillow and sighs heavily. “I don’t know how to explain all this. I’m freaking out too though, honest.”

“Whatever.” He finally lets go, thank fuck, and picks up the textbook sprawled on the floor. He wants to say something to make him stay, but wants nothing more than for him to leave at the same time. “Manuela will be back soon. Don’t die until then.” 

“Felix” he stops at the call as he’s going through the door.

“What.” 

“I’m not doing this on purpose you know. I don’t....” His brother stares intently at him, red eyes glinting in the dying sun like the predatory glare of a cat. “I’m not trying to make good on our promise early.” 

“You’re never going to let that go, huh.” He still won’t turn around. Stubborn little shit. Sylvain’s going to miss him.

“Nope.” 

“Just…” he sighs heavily. “Good night Sylvain.” And he’s out the door, leaving Sylvain with his brother. 

“Yeah.” He says to empty air. “Good night.”

* * *

He wakes up a few hours later to Manuela shaking his shoulder. The moon is a thin dagger in the sky reflecting silver through the window. Manuela’s face is haggard in the light of the candle on the bedside table, and there’s a twinge of fear in her eye that he’s never seen before. He once came in with a leg broken in three places and a dagger in the ribs and she didn’t so much as break a sweat, but now as he’s lying like a porcelain doll on the sheets she might as well be screaming. 

“Good. You’re awake.” she bustles off to grab a tray and plops a bowl of soup in front of him. It’s watery in some parts and thick like a bog in others, chunks of what can only be described as ‘stuff’ floating on top.  _ Awfully familiar,  _ his brother chuckles. “I have to get some food in you, but if you’re starving like this then there’s no way you’ll be able to handle anything solid.” 

“Did… Annette make this?” he pokes the spoon at a glob of fat sitting in the middle. 

“Yes, actually. She was so worried that she volunteered to make it for you. How did you know?” 

“Lucky guess.” Awfully nice of her to do that for him. He hopes he manages to thank her before- before-

_ Before what?  _ His brother says in his ear. There’s only one road he can see from his vantage point on the hill and it’s paved with bones and painted with blood. Apples and oranges. They’re all the same in the end. Beasts, the lot of ‘em, eh? 

Manuela’s heels click against the wood as she stands to hover over him. “You have to eat the soup, you know. You can’t just stare at it all night.” 

He grimaces. “I don’t think I’ll be able to keep it down.” 

“Ladies don’t like it when you diss their cooking, you know. You should be a little more grateful.” 

“Seriously. I haven’t been able to keep anything down for weeks.” It doesn’t matter how hungry he is, how much his stomach screams for food. He knows what he needs, and there’s no way he’ll take it. 

“Shit, kid. This thing really is giving you a hard time.” 

“Do you know what’s going on with me?” Feigning ignorance is all the rage for pathological liars these days. He should really write a manual, assuming he doesn’t turn into a bloodthirsty demon. 

She deflates at that. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I’ve ruled out anything natural which means that this is some sort of magical ailment. But I just don’t know what!” she huffs. “Like, can you explain the teeth at all?” 

Damn divas and their need for suspense. She certainly waited a while to drop that she had been poking around in his mouth while he was out. Lying his way through this shit will be a monumental effort for sure. Traps set in the ground, holes covered with leaves, a veritable fucking minefield of a conversation. He knows exactly what's going on, and the shadow of his brother leering over his shoulder is proof. 

“I just woke up with them a few days ago” teeth lying on the ground, blood in his throat, falling into his hands like pieces from a child's game and his brother laughs and laughs and laughs “I couldn’t tell you why.” 

“Figures” she sighs. “...When did this all start anyways?” 

“‘Bout three months ago” Every good liar knows the trick to being good is to be as honest as you can. And really, one small detail isn’t going to matter when they stab a lance through his eye. 

“Three months ago, eh? Do you remember getting cursed back then?”

His stomach gnaws like a pit in his gut, but the stew isn’t getting any more appetizing. “What, by a scorned ex? Nah, no way.” 

She rolls her eyes at that. “With your personality? Can’t imagine.” she says, quiet enough that no one should be able to hear. Forgot to check his ears too, huh? “What about any missions you had? C’mon kid, think for me.”

“Yeah, there was a big one that month.” There’s something screaming in the back of his head, and it tastes like hunger. His eyes sweep up and down Manuela as she paces, her exposed legs, her long neck, the bare expanse of her clavicle. He could lunge out of bed and pluck out her heart like a cherry if he wants. He just might. It’s hard to think, hard to listen with the hammering of her heart so close by. 

Her eyes drift to the side as she thinks, finger playing with her painted bottom lip. His stomach growls. “Missions… Missions… Shit. I can’t keep track of anything they have you do.” 

That’s about as much information as he’s going to volunteer. She’ll have to start pulling teeth if she wants any more information. Not that he would mind. The amount of times he’s bitten his lip in the past few days? Absurd, really. 

“I… can’t really remember the specifics. It’s hard to think past everything that’s been happening lately.” he shrugs apologetically as his brother cackles. Of course he remembers. Every single bit, the weight of the Lance in his hand, the way his brother bled, the way the beast crawled under his skin. Rows of teeth tear him apart, he laughs it off the whole way through. The manual is really becoming a viable option at this point. 

“Seriously?” she huffs as he gives an exaggerated pout. “I’ll have to go ask then. The sooner we sort this out the better.” She stares him down as she moves to leave. “And that soup better be finished by the time I get back, y’hear? Or I’ll pour it down your throat myself.” The swishing of her sleeves as she exits is drowned out as he shifts lower in bed, waiting. 

Manuela will jump to her own conclusions soon enough.  _ Oh, a Relic? He was acting odd, eh? Well, come this way. I’ve plumped him up nice for you. _ He isn’t too sure he cares. 

But the beast does, imbues him with some awful need to  _ survive  _ that he last felt drowning at the bottom of a well. Maybe that’s what love is, wanting someone who isn’t you to live on. He thinks about love like a landlocked village talks of the sea; vast, full, mirroring every colour of the sky in some twisted form of reciprocity. All he’s ever seen are stagnant ponds and vicious undertows. 

But the both of them are the same, evidenced by how he overturns his covers and plants his feet on the cold ground without even thinking, the way his stomach keens for something to fill it. 

Muddy ponds all around. A mirage in the desert to drown himself in. 

The night air is a punch in the gut as he slips through the window. It’s a long way down from the second floor. He could shatter himself like a stained glass window and bleed red shards. He could stay and become a training dummy for Seteth. His brother says  _ jump _ , and his body listens.

His feet land solid on the ground. He isn't sure if he should count this as a mercy or not. It tells him to move, and his feet start walking. 

He needs food, and quick. How he's been able to sustain himself on nothing more than half an apple a week is a mystery he doesn't want to know the answer to. The lack of any sort of sustenance has him shaking in the legs, makes his fingers go cold. His common sense tells him to go to the kitchen, where they keep the meat. The primal pit in his gut drives him to the stables and settles in on a lone fluttering heartbeat, as light as moth wings. 

The cat doesn't even have time to yowl as he sinks his teeth into its neck and pulls, spitting out hair before diving back further. The smell of copper fills the air like a handful of coins and blood splatters the wall as he digs into the seven-course feast hidden behind the cage of its ribs, its guts a trail of rope in his hands that he tears apart like sausage links, rips into it with his claws and strips the flesh off its bones. 

He wants to scream, he wants to laugh. It's both the most delicious thing he's ever tasted and more revolting than shit at the bottom of a shoe. 

The sound of metal cuts through the pool of light from the torch on the wall and makes him drop the shoulder he was gnawing on. It plops on the ground as the metal tip of a knight's boot rounds the corner and he disappears behind the wall with the sort of silence he always longed to possess. 

He hears the guard curse, the readying of their lance as the survey the area. Soon the alarm bells will ring and the hunt will begin. One part of him says to die quietly. It’s drowned out by a wild chorus screaming  _ run run run RUN RUN  _ at his heels. He doesn’t know where. His brother does. 

He scales the brick wall of the reception hall with ease, grasping onto the rough stone with claws he never noticed he had. He's a passenger in his mind, a backseat spectator to the actions of his own body. It’s the sort of thing that only happens during sex, he muses, and receives a flick in the face for that. 

No one likes dark humour these days. 

He wonders what he must look like, skittering on top of the elegant roof of the reception hall. Some sort of demented lizard, a story mothers tell to their children to keep them inside at night. Funny how he agonized over jumping down from the second floor only to end up on the roof again. Consistency is vital, it seems. 

He startles at the sound of the alarm bell sounding out through the grounds. Garreg Mach is always so quick to snap its jaws at any threat to the population, swallow a dead cat and breathe out fire. He has to get down one way or another, before the falcon knights catch sight of him and pin him like a bug against corkboard. He can take a human no problem, but a wyvern has too many teeth. 

Not yet, his brother reminds him. He does not want to know what  _ yet _ is. 

They catch sight of him in the marketplace as he runs towards the portcullis at the end of the line, bloody footprints tracking on the stone. An arrow whizzes by his feet and he stumbles. A cricket chirps in a far off bush somewhere, and the small fry on night watch pour in with their lances. 

Hunting was a popular sport in Faerghus. The amount of viable game disappeared the further North you went, but the warm ocean current on the edge of Fraldarius made for good grounds teeming with unfortunate deer. He went with his father and the Duke a few times, and they all grinned and laughed as they stuck the star of the show full of pins until it gave up and died. 

He feels a little sympathy now. Maybe he should follow suit. With his back against the portcullis, lances at his neck, and a devil on his shoulder, it seems like the only option. 

As always, his brother disagrees. 

The rusted metal of the portcullis scrapes his palms raw as he strains upwards, stick thin arms trembling with a strength he could never have even dreamed of. He hears the knights gasp through the sweat pouring down the side of his face as the massive gate slowly grinds upwards, his arms screaming, legs buckling under the agonizing weight as he heaves, teeth biting clean through his lip. Finally, enough of a crack opens for him. His brother holds his foot in the door and he dodges through the slings and arrows and tears down the stone path.

He does not know where he is going. Neither of them have any clue. 

* * *

It’s morning, and he licks the blood from his claws.

  
  


His face appears in the reflection of the water like a pale bruise as he washes his mouth, bloody claws tearing red ribbons in the water. The skin of his face is pitched between cheekbone and jaw like a thin tent, listless eyes sunken into bruised pits. His hair falls in a shaggy curtain to his mid-back. The length brings bitter memories of adolescence that leave an acrid taste in the back of his throat. Once, he might’ve retched. They seem impossibly distant now, a life in a frigid gilded cage to a life in the barren Northern woods might as well be centuries apart. 

Maybe it is. He doesn’t know how long it has been since he broke from the monastery, whether it had been five month or five years. The presence of a Crest in the blood extends a lifespan. Minor gives you an extra fifty, Major gives twice that. 

Beasts live longer, can roam for centuries before they are struck down. A luxury he desperately hopes he is not afforded. 

His brother is a lingering companion over his shoulder, plying him with sweets in his dreams and trailing mangled carcasses into the cave for him to eat at dawn’s light. He is not alone, but terribly lonely. He is one fragment of his only companion, lying on the floor and stroking his own hair. At day he carries himself like pallbearers carry a coffin, at night he prowls the woods with sharp yellow eyes and wicked teeth. He despises touch, but desperately longs for the presence of humanity that accompanies it. The last person who fucked him was torn crotch to shoulder before they even finished, heart impaled on the claw of his index finger like a plum from a pie. They get his body for a night, he gets their body forever. The taste of catharsis is sweet. 

But now with a body that would not look out of place in a mass grave, no one spares him a second glance. It could almost be called liberation, if the price of freedom included jagged teeth and a taste for blood. He would take that over a pound of flesh any day. 

He doesn’t need to sleep, but he is exhausted all the same. The weight of his unending days trail after him along with the fringe of his cloak as he picks his way through the frozen woods. His brother waits in the trees, watches him from far away. One day it will swallow him whole and he will be no longer. The day is soon, but time doesn’t mean anything to him at all. 

  
  
  


It’s midnight, and he’s cracking open a wandering soldier’s ribs like straw to tear into her lungs.

  
  
  


The livery on the soldier was white with teal trim. A Fraldarius soldier. When he slits her chest with a claw he thinks about Felix. When he tears into her neck like a vicious lover he thinks about his eyes. When he bites strips off her thigh he thinks about his expression. He’d be furious. He’d be completely disgusted. He wouldn’t be able to look him in the eye. The last time he saw him his back was turned. 

Would he recognize him? When he washes himself in the frigid streams he can’t tell who looks back. 

He comes to one day with ragged holes torn in the back of his cloak and a spine weeping blood. The sharp spurs growing down the length of his back cry out in pain as he grasps them with a hand shaking like a freshly minted soldier’s knees. He chokes down a scream between his thumb and forefinger, teeth tearing easily through the skin as tears run unbidden down his face. He wants to wail, wants to fucking die right now so he doesn’t become some- some hideous creature.Teeth were easily hidden, claws could be chipped off, but now his own bones are traitors breaking through his skin and turning him into- what? Another beast to be hunted by some fucking pack of wannabe knights? 

It was soon, or later, but now it’s right that moment. His hands tell him he’s hideous, his eyes tell him to die, his body is a fucking knife in the back at the best of times, but this? He bats away the pain that comes when his hand twists around and grasps the spur at the base of his spine and he  _ howls _ into his arm as it snaps off, teeth tearing into flesh as he muffles his pain. The sticky blood on his hand has him scrabbling at the next one but he manages to wrench it off like the other, black spots burning in his vision as he screams into the meat of his forearm, teeth scraping against the bone. 

He pulls his arm away as he struggles to breathe, the sound of his agonized wheezing echoing off the walls of the cave. He stares at the bleeding imprint of his jaws left in his arm and sees red as he pinches his canine in between his fingers and wrenches it out, the tooth hanging on by nothing but a few bloody strings before he flings it against the wall. There’s nothing else in the world he wants than to tear his disgusting body to shreds, pin his teenage self against the wall and slice his skin to ribbons and let his blood poison the earth until everything fucking dies. Catharsis is sweet, passing his body around like a shared joint was like wrapping himself in a soft blanket compared to tearing his bones out of his body. Catharsis tastes like blood under his tongue, bones under his teeth. 

  
  
  


It’s somewhere in between, and he’s lying on the ground with tears on his cheeks. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to be honest this entire fic was just to make a pun about sylvain eating pussy. Huh? Huh? 
> 
> I'm not very happy with this one. Maybe a lack of dream sequences? Don't worry, they will come back in full force next chapter.
> 
> Comments appreciated!


	5. the sky was pink

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What's your fascination with past tense anyways?
> 
> \--
> 
> Simultaneously regaining and losing your last shred of personhood by turning into a big cannibalistic monster and then going to hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am almost certain this makes absolutely no sense to anyone except for me but that lends it a bit of charm, don't you think? Or not. I really want to explain my thought process regarding this entire thing, but I don't want to get too lengthy.

His breath comes out white as he creeps through the brush, feet scraping the frost from the dead branches littering the forest floor. The string of his bow bounces taught against his fingers and cuts into his gloves, caressing an arrow in between his fore and middle fingers. He’s riding close on the trail, has been for weeks as he narrows in with more deadly precision than any hound ever could. The path of broken branches and naked trees, the whispers of terror in the surrounding towns, the bodies littering the territory like mangled dolls. 

Felix knows a boar when he smells one. 

He’s planned his victory for years, every detail honed to a single point. He’ll drag the boar by the scruff of his neck out of whatever fucking den he’s built for himself out of bones and armour, then he’ll parade his body through Faerghus before throwing him at the feet of his father. The Duke can have fun domesticating him all he wants, so long as they have a war. Felix doesn’t care for the logistics of it. All he wants is his sword in his hand and a neck to swing it at. 

And after? Well, he’s polished a nice little plaque with the boar’s name on it. Maybe he’ll mount his head on it and hang it up over the fire. 

He turns and aims his bow at the sound of wings beating above him before lowering it, Ingrid astride her pegasus alighting on the frozen ground. 

“Did you see it?” he asks, the frozen morning air stinging at his tongue.

“No, but the cover of the pines is too dense to see anything from above.” she sighs, shivering from the temperature of the upper atmosphere. “He could be anywhere in there.”

“I’ll keep going on foot” he says as he slings his bow over his shoulder, gripping the sword sheathed at his waist instead. “Do whatever you want, just-”

“Tell me when you find him, I know.” she huffs “you’ve said the same thing a hundred times.”

“We’re close. I can feel it.” 

“You’re not going to kill him. We’re bringing him back.” he can feel her glare denting his skin even as he turns his back. 

“I know.” he bites out. “Just don’t stop me when I rough it up before dragging it off.” 

Her sigh puffs out like a wyvern’s breath. “Be careful in the pines, okay? I can’t cover you there.” 

“I’ll be fine. Now go.” 

He stalks off to the sound of pegasus wings, toeing his way further into the forest. The pine cover she mentioned is further up ahead, a dark green mass capped with white in the distance. It’s clear that the boar had entered it with the way the underbrush had been so artfully smashed. It truly does leave a trail of destruction wherever it goes, no cause or concern for what, or  _ who _ , it sinks its teeth into. 

He takes a deep breath, and stalks further in.

* * *

His brother has started looking different lately, a shabby wool cloak pulled over a dead body to preserve its dignity. Its face is ashen, its skin is taut. Its teeth poke through the rotten space between its jaws and cheekbones like spikes haphazardly thrown in the ground to deter attackers. 

The dead are dead, he thinks. They don’t exactly have any dignity to preserve. But in this case, maybe the cloak is warranted. He’s had enough of his brother’s ugly mug to last a lifetime. 

They’re playing catch today with a heavy ball that leaves dark stains on his hands. He’s frustratingly bad at the game, because his brother tosses the ball up high where the sun is. When he turns his head up to look the light sears his vision and he has to close his eyes. It isn’t very fun, but he’s never gotten the chance to play with his brother like this before so he’ll deal with it. 

His brother’s teeth drip in the light, and it’s really gross. At least he’s still pretty. He checked, patted his face and hair and was glad to find unbroken skin and soft curls. Maybe that’s why everyone liked him so much, a pretty little rich boy with a pretty little body who never knew how to say no. A real treasure, undoubtedly. 

He flops on the grass, the sun searing overhead and eating his shadow. “I’m beat.” he says, squinting upwards. “The ball keeps hitting me in the head. I think I’ve got a lump up there that you could spin a horseshoe on.” 

His brother’s shadow casts over him, a single cloud covering the sun in the endless blue sky. “You could’ve said so earlier” his voice whistles through his jaw. 

“Oh well” he groans as he rubs his head. 

His brother squats down, letting the light shine fully in his eyes. He rolls over and buries his head in his hands, the grass tickling his nose as he breathes in. “You should take better care of yourself” he hears, muffled by his arms. 

An older brother that bandages up his little brothers scrapes. What a concept! “Yeah, yeah” he says, grass catching on his tongue. The taste is bitter. He spits.

“Really.” he hears the grass shift as his brother sits on its ass. “You’re always getting hurt like this.”

He shuts his eyes tight and watches the burning patterns swirl under his eyelids. If he watches long enough it becomes a tunnel for him to fall in. “Don’t lecture me now. We were having so much fun.” 

His brother throws grass on his bare arms in lieu of bonking him on the head like the way Glenn did with Felix when he was getting snot everywhere. Messy kid. Where is he now? “I don’t want you getting hurt out there.” 

He looks up with a glare. His brother raises an eyebrow. “Maybe I like it, huh? Ever thought about that?” 

It throws more grass on him and he sneezes. “Dummy. I’m out there too. I can’t take care of you if we both die.” 

“You’re already dead” he points out. So long, and he can still feel the weight of the Lance in his hands like it was a day ago. He wonders how much his brother’s body has rotted by now. Ravens at his corpse, crows plucking at his eyes. 

It’s eyes glimmer red in the sun, and its jaw makes a sickening noise as it smiles. “Maybe I am.” it says, and he thinks that his voice sounds like two stones. 

* * *

The demonic beasts crashes into the trees as Felix leaps away, the horn crowning the top of it’s head missing the edge of his cloak with room for a fly. The wood splinters and shoots out as he ducks and rolls across the ruined clearing, his shoulder hitting the frozen ground with a jolt he knows will bruise later. He doesn’t care. Bruises are proof of a fight, nothing to bitch about later. He almost relishes in them. 

What he does care about, is that this beast is getting in his fucking way. He was so,  _ so  _ close on the boar’s trail that he could practically smell it, and then this thing came tramping through the pine cover where Ingrid said she couldn’t cover him. He sends a bolt of thunder up through the jagged canopy in hopes that maybe she’ll see it and can walk over to help or something, and his arm stings with the residue of magic. 

The thing is tough, tougher than any of the beasts he had faced back at the academy. He has no doubt he can finish it off, of course, but the way his sword glances off the dark armour covering its body promises a long and grueling fight. He notices several missing teeth from its maw as it howls at him, a few spikes missing from the curve of its spine. Curious. It must have been in a scrap or two beforehand. 

This is going to be fun. 

He sends another bolt of thunder at its face making it rear back on its hind legs and exposing its underside. He manages to dart in and out, slashing his sword at its throat and making it howl before it comes crashing down. His boots slide on the hard ground as he readies himself for another attack, breath coming out in hard clouds as he searches for an opening. The beast is odd- like nothing he’s ever faced before. It’s smaller than most of its kind, but it more than makes up for that with the ferocity and speed of its attacks. 

He dashes out of the way again as it spits a bout of flame at him, setting the pines that stood behind him on fire. Fucking beasts. If it isn’t flame, then it’s poison, and both are a pain in the ass to deal with. All of this is a complete waste of time. He could’ve dragged the boar halfway to Fhirdiad with all the time he’s spent trying to chip off this thing’s teeth. 

And if he finds out that he’s been tracking this thing the whole time then he’s going to roast it over a fucking spit and have it for dinner.

* * *

Felix tugs at his sleeve, eyes wide and glassy. They look like two amber marbles, and he could pluck them out real easy. He won’t though, because he thinks he might love him. There’s a bubble of snot at his nose, and his lip wobbles. Glenn wasn’t kidding when he said that he was gross. 

He tugs down at his pant leg before burying his face at his hip. Sylvain sighs and pats his head, thinking about the snot that’s gotten all over his nice clothes. 

“What is it?” he says, prying him off his leg like some weird beetle. “Did Dimitri break your sword again? I’ll give him hell for it if you stop crying, okay?” 

He shakes his head and rubs his gross nose all over the puffy sleeve of his shirt. “You’re fighting again…” his voice is meek and wobbly. He really was cute as a kid, even if he was weird and dribbly. Was, he thinks, tastes the word like it has a meaning. Was. Dimitri and Ingrid are there, but they’re just… there. Faceless and stiff like the pawns on his father’s chess board. They don’t do or say anything, so he ignores them and focuses on Felix. 

“I’m not fighting anyone. Look, I’m fine” he says, gesturing at himself, but the bruises are dark enough to show through the thin white linen, and Felix is smart enough to notice. Dimitri topples over, and his brother crests the hill. 

Felix curls up his chubby little fists and beats against his ribs, repeating “Stop lying! Stop lying!” with every blow, fresh fat tears soaking into where his shirt tucks into his trousers. Real cute, twice as annoying. He’s still annoying, never shutting up about swords or training or whatever. He isn’t cute anymore. 

“Ow” he exclaims as a stray fist hits a bruise. “Ow, ow,  _ ow _ ,  _ fuck _ , Felix, okay, please stop.”

He looks up and glares. “Then stop fighting!” 

This kid. Really, what is he supposed to do? Give up and die? Let him put his eye out with his sword? He’s had enough of lying down and letting people do what they want to him to last a lifetime. “I’m fine. It doesn’t matter. What about you? Won’t you ever give it a break?” Of course, Felix has no idea what he’s talking about. They’re just children after all, and his brother is walking closer. 

But they aren’t, and he’s twenty-two and Felix is nineteen and pointing a sword at his neck as he’s lying flat on the ground and Dimitri’s dead and his brother is close enough that he can see the look in his eyes and he knows he’s going to die.

“You’re a person too, for fuck’s sake” he says with the reflection of his sword glancing off steely amber. 

He laughs, and hopes Felix sees his teeth. “Bit too late for that now, isn’t it?”

_ A person _ he wails and beats his little fists against his chest  _ a person a person a person a person a person _

But a monster lives on blood and bone and doesn’t care for anything else in the world. A person doesn’t have claws and fangs and doesn’t live only for its next meal. Maybe he always was like that, and they just couldn’t see it. Felix never saw it, never saw through his shirt to the bruises underneath because he was a kid, and they were all children except for him, who was nothing in between. 

And Felix is gone, and so is Dimitri, and so is Ingrid and he’s twelve again, and his brother is standing over him. He’s different, flushed and whole and  _ angry _ and he’s a person too. Everyone, everyone, everyone except for him. He picks him up like a ragdoll and his hand shatters his throat, and oblivion tastes like snot and tears. 

* * *

The beast wails and thrashes with his sword in its neck, its red eyes bulging like warts as it howls up into the frigid air. Felix gives the blade a good tug and it falls to the ground with a loud crash, naked bones and teeth making hollow sounds like dull chimes in the wind. It resembles a pillbug as it curls up in its death throes, completely pathetic now that it's been declawed. He gives his blade a flick to rid it of the strange black blood that had poured out of the thing and walks back to the edge of the clearing, where he had discarded his bow and quiver. 

Ingrid crashes through the trees with all the grace of a newborn foal, her lance cracking against the underbrush as she bursts into the clearing. Her breath streams out white as she takes in the corpse of the beast.

“I came as fast as I could” she pants, “but it seems like you’ve taken care of everything. That was quick.”

Felix wipes his sword on the edge of the cloak, no regard for the stains it leaves. “I handled it easily.” 

“Clearly.” she frowns. “What’s that?” 

Felix whips around, sword at the ready. “What’s what?”

She steps closer to the beast, nudging its snout with the blade of her lance. “Look at that. I don’t think I’ve seen one like this before.” 

He steps closer and follows the blade. Sitting proud just before the first spur is a large stone nestled in the flesh, a dull, dead red blot in the midst of black and silver. “A Crest stone. So what? They’re on all the beasts.” 

Felix sees a twist of pain in wide green eyes. “But the engraving…” 

He leans in closer, and his eyes widen as he takes in the subtle etching of the two interlocking scythes against grainy crimson. Three years ago he watched his friend wither down to skin and bone before vanishing into thin air, and now there’s… Whatever the fuck this is. “What the hell? Is the Margrave pulling some beast stunt now too?” 

“I have no idea” Ingrid says as she worries at her bottom lip. “The Crest stone is with the Lance of Ruin though, which was returned to House Gautier after…” she trails off. 

“I’ll tell my father to have a talk with the Margrave. Maybe he’ll find out what the hell is going on here.” He turns his back to leave. No use dwelling any mysterious symbols. If it won’t help him hunt down the boar, then it isn’t worth looking into. 

Ingrid turns to follow him, her eyes downcast. “First the whole mess with Miklan, then Sylvain disappearing, and now this? I just can’t help but feel like something’s wrong…” 

He doesn’t want to think about this, or Sylvain, or House Gautier at all. He doesn’t want to think about how his eyes were a thousand miles away from where they sat, or the sharp dip of the juncture between his collarbones and throat that stood out like a jagged mountain pass, how light he felt in his arms even though he was a good half-foot taller than him. How he didn’t even turn around to say goodbye. He’s not going to dwell on it and let Sylvain become another noose around his neck.

“My old man can deal with it” he bites out before turning to the trees.

He has some hunting to do. 

* * *

They’re back at the pond again, and it’s a beautiful clear blue that matches the sky perfectly. He had said it was some twisted form of reciprocity, but it really is something special, how the sky mirrors the sea. Maybe that’s what love is. 

His brother looks ahead beside him, its hair caressed by the breeze. He sees it for what it is now, the beast wearing him like a child wearing their father’s cloak in a game of dress-up, but he doesn’t care. It’s been nice to him, never hit him or touched him, and he thinks that maybe it loves him too. 

“I’m scared,” he says, meek and soft like he never is. His brother has already seen through him, dissected him down to the bone, so it’s only right that he gets to be as vulnerable as he can be. He’s fourteen years old and he lets his brother hug him tightly. Somewhere else he’s twenty-two and lying dead with blood in his mouth. 

“Why?” it says, gentle, how Miklan never learned to be. The hug was jagged thorns at his skin before, but now Sylvain basks in the feeling like a cat in a sunbeam shooting through a stained glass window. 

“My brother is going to meet me in hell” he whispers. “He isn’t like you.” 

And he doesn’t need any more words to describe it, because it has seen how he wears the bruises and cuts and broken bones, how they all piled up on his skin like dried blood caked to his face. It hugs him tighter, and he lets out a quiet sob into the fabric of its shirt. 

“Don’t worry” it hushes. “I’ll still be there.”

Sylvain looks up. “What do you mean?”

It chuckles. “You said it yourself, didn’t you? We’re the same. And as long as I’m with you, no one will ever be able to hurt you ever again.” 

He sniffles, weakly holding up a hand with his pinky sticking out. “Promise?”

And his brother smiles wide, showing every last one of its teeth.

“Promise.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow! We did it! My first multi chapter fic finally done. This thing has been in the works since December and it feels great to finally get it out. Huge thanks to everyone who left comments and kudos, you really saved my ass on this one.
> 
> Sylvain is (obviously) my favourite and he's so much fun to write, especially in regards to how he presents himself on the outside vs his internal monologue. I have another fic in the works that should come out... soon? 
> 
> I'm @mumagi on twitter and Tumblr so feel free to follow and talk with me! I'm serious! i'm lonely...

**Author's Note:**

> Sylvain is the only character I can reliably write... uh oh. 
> 
> Comments greatly appreciated.
> 
> Follow me on twitter @mumagi for... something


End file.
